my journey through my words and my lens

Shimerring Wat Phra Kaew: Part 1

Friday, July 29, 2011

Last Day in Bangkok

Three days in Bangkok was gone pretty fast. At that moment, I was already on my last day in Bangkok. The weather was, as usual, shiny and humid. When the day started, I already felt that my legs were sore and I wasn’t in my best shape to walk the streets of Bangkok. But I gave my 1000% strength so I would not waste my time there.

And to equip myself that day, I ate this delicious breakfast called kweatiaw nam (at least, that was what I heard).From my hostel, I used the free map as the guidance to lead me to Wat Phra Kaew. But on my first day, I had already passed this place when I was on my way to Wat Arun so finding Wat Phra Kaew was quite a piece of cake matter (I can brag a little bit about this, can't I?)I was early. So, I had to wait outside with bunch of Chinese people. And when it was finally open, woosh! All those guys just rushed in.Dvarapala: gate guardian statue (either human or demonic) in Hinduism and Buddhism. You can also find another form of dvarapala in my post when I visited Borobudur Temple in January 2011The Dvarapalas. Sorry for a little bit cropped photograph.Phra Sri Rattana Chedi in Sri Lankan styleThe sky was blue, the weather was nice (with tendency to a wee bit too hot). But it made a great blue sky for a photograph.Gold fever! The most stand-out color in Wat Phra Kaew is gold. You can see almost everything is covered in gold.Beautiful silhoutte with a little bit light leak in the sunny morning🙂I found out that the Buddha statue in Wat Phra Kaew is actually the same as the ones in Borobudur temple.Huge golden dvarapala.Model of Angkor Wat (the most sacred of all Cambodian shrines) can also be seen here. From wikipedia, I found that this model was started by King Mongkut and completed by King Nangklao (Rama III), as the memorial of Angkor Wat and Kingdom of Cambodia that have been occupied by Siam for many hundred years until the colonization of Kingdom of Cambodia by France.One of many beautiful golden carvings you can find out through this place.Five headed nagaIn Buddhist mythology and Hindu mythology, a kinnara is a paradigmatic lover, a celestial musician, half-human and half-horse (India) or half-bird (south-east Asia). (from: wikipedia.org)

I’ve got so many great photographs to be uploaded about Wat Phra Kaew, so I have to break the posts into several parts. But that’s all for now.

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2 thoughts on “Shimerring Wat Phra Kaew: Part 1”

This place is amazingly beautiful, isn’t it? I was overwhelmed the first time I got into Wat Phra Kaew’s courtyard. By the way, I didn’t know that the gold cheddi was influenced by Sri Lankan style (which means a good reason to go to Sri Lanka itself! haha).